Robert Ellis Books In Order

City of Fire

When a vibrant young woman is found in bed by her hotshot businessman husband, carved from belly to throat with a very sharp knife, the elite Robbery Homicide division of the LAPD responds in full force. Best case scenario for lead Detective Lena Gamble: Nikki Brant’s husband killed her, case closed, and on to the next crime scene before the ravenous Hollywood media can get their lurid tabloid machinery up and running. Unfortunately for Lena, though, she knows that best case scenarios only happen in the movies. The murder is the first in a series of brutal crimes against beautiful women thought to be perpetrated by the same man, a killer dubbed Romeo in the press. It s the case of a lifetime, and promises to either elevate Lena to the upper echelons of a publicity hungry department in need of heroes, or bring about a very public and painful fall from grace. Lena has been in the public eye before, on the night her rock star brother was gunned down on a dark street in Hollywood an unsolved murder so grisly she s never recovered. She knows the score when the press and the LAPD collide. As the investigation plays out and a massive forest fire blankets the city with acrid smoke, a cloud of conspiracy descends on Lena s investigation, and she knows she ll have to grind this one out…
because Nikki Brant s death just breathed new life into more than one closed case…
because the web of conspiracy is spun more intricately than she can possibly imagine…
and because Lena knows there s only one rock solid rule to murder in L.A.: The bigger the spectacle, the deeper the horror.

The Lost Witness

With his novel City of Fire, Robert Ellis debuted a dynamic new character in Los Angeles detective Lena Gamble, but also captured a vivid picture of the city of Los Angeles. Readers and critics made City of Fire an instant phenomenon, as the book became a Los Angeles Times bestseller and was named a top summer read by People magazine, USA Today, and The New York Times.

Now Lena Gamble is a cop held in disgrace by department higher ups for the explosive way the Romeo case played out, though she’s still hailed as a hero by her colleagues for catching the killer. For her punishment, she hasn t handled a real murder investigation in eight months. When the chief finally tosses her a case, she s thrilled until she gets a look at the scene and realizes he s probably setting her up to be exiled once and for all: The victim is unidentified, and there are no witnesses, and no leads. Just the body, chopped into pieces and dropped in a Dumpster gruesome enough to ensure that once again the media will be following Lena s every move.

Robert Ellis delivers another high speed, commercial, powerful read, featuring one of the most engaging and vibrant police characters on the shelf today.

Access to Power

Three weeks before a crucial senatorial election, a man is gunned down, execution style, in a D.C. office. The police are quick to call it a case of robbery gone bad, but Frank Miles suspects something more sinister behind the murder of his business partner.